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Here are ten great paired texts with which to recognize black history month while meeting numerous Language Arts standards. All the plays are based on the given event–not it’s paired text (in most cases the play was published before the given book). That means each pairing represents distinctly unique points of view (Literature CCSS #6), making for livelier discussions and quality comparisons (CCSS Lit #7). And because these plays are based on real events, they’ll also satisfy CCSS Informational Text #6. Each includes a comprehension activity, too, assuring your students will satisfy numerous other standards as well. And because almost all my plays were originally commission by and published in Scholastic’s Storyworks and Scope magazines, they’ve been professionally vetted, making them the best reader’s theater on the market. Just click on the image to preview or purchase on my TeachersPayTeachers storefront. Happy directing!

One of the things I find fascinating—and disturbing—about photos from the Civil Rights era are the faces in the crowd. Consider this picture of a mob beating Freedom Riders in Birmingham in 1961. Here are the faces of regular Americans—our neighbors, friends, sons, and grandpas—all caught on the wrong side of history, leaving a legacy of ugliness.

Sadly, an incident this past week in Washington D.C. shows things haven’t changed much. History’s lens caught private school students from Kentucky apparently harassing Native American Nathan Phillips. “The looks in these young men’s faces,” said Phillips, “I mean, if you go back and look at the lynchings that was done (in America)…and you’d see the faces on the people…the glee and the hatred in their faces. That’s what these faces looked like.”

Two pictures of the same thing, sixty years apart: faces in the crowd caught on the wrong side of history. It shows we have a lot more work to do.

Character, kindness, justice, and tolerance should be taught year-round—not just during Black History Month—but here are a number of great reader’s theater scripts and classroom plays to make February especially meaningful. When combined with your excellent teaching, perhaps more of our students will be caught on the right side of history, leaving behind a legacy of courage and kindness.

All these plays are available on my TeachersPayTeachers storefront. They typically come with comprehension activities developed around the CCSs, and they include reproduction and performance rights. Not sure where to begin? Try downloading my free MLK Preview Pack.

Whether for RT or stage performance, here are half-a-dozen kid-friendly scripts to ramp up your MLK Day celebrations and Black History Month curriculum. To preview or purchase, just click on a cover and you’ll be taken to my storefront at TeachersPayTeachers.

All my plays are carefully researched and fact-checked, providing accurate representations of the historic events themselves. Martin’s Big Dream was originally published in Storyworks under the title, “I Have a Dream.” It comes directly from MLK’s own writing and depicts an incident from his childhood that helped set him on the path as a champion civil rights. In the Jailhouse with Dr. King views the Montgomery Bus Boycott through the eyes of a troubled teen, culminating in a historic moment in front of King’s own home. Gonna Let it Shine tells Sheyann Webb’s true story of courage during the Selma “Bloody Sunday” events. Just eight years old at the time, Sheyann was known as King’s “youngest crusader.” All of these stories are fun to stage and offer poignant conclusions your kids will be talking about long after MLK Day has passed.

Here are three more compelling titles. Like all my plays, they come with detailed teaching notes and comprehension activities. Sitting Down for Dr. King looks at the Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-ins from the perspective of a ten year old white boy. When the sit-ins interfere with David’s celebration, he’s faced with a tough decision. MLK’s Freedom Marchcomes from the viewpoint of a working class family who overcome challenges to attend the March on Washington where King delivered his famous I Have a Dream speech. And We Shall Overcome, my best-selling MLK script, offers a creative look at the Birmingham Children’s Crusade. Kids enjoy posing as a television crew to narrate this one, but like the bulk of my plays, the perspective is that of a child similar in age to your students. It also embeds protest songs from the Civil Rights Crusade.

Because nearly all my titles were originally published in Scholastic classroom magazines, they’ve been vetted by professional editors and are designed to meet the latest standards. Still not sure? Download my FREE MLK Preview Pack. It provides a detailed look at each of four African-American History plays including the first few pages of each and a glimpse of the accompanying comprehension activities. Also download my FREE guide to teaching with RT, which provides tips and ideas as well as the brain science behind using drama to teach reading. Finally, my mini-poster, 5 Stage Acting Hacks for Kids, will help keep your students focused on some of the more important elements of performing. It’s also free.

Explore ReadAloudPlays.com for More

That’s right, I have a ton of other professionally-published read aloud plays for the elementary and middle school classroom.Start by taking a gander at my collections: Classic Short Story Plays such The Monkey’s Paw, Black History Plays such as Box Brown’s Freedom Crate, and American History Plays such as The Secret Soldier. They’re all available at ReadAloudPlays.com or at my storefront on TeachersPayTeachers.

I recently read an article about how “slow reading” is gaining acceptance as an academic approach. Though the piece was aimed at high school and college instructors, the gist remains the same at the elementary and middle school levels: let’s slow our kids down and have them read meaningfully. To this I say, “hot dang!” I’ve long been an advocate of focusing on accuracy and beauty rather than speed.

The purveyors of Oral Reading Fluency measures no doubt developed their program with good intentions. They saw a correlation between quality reading and speed. They found that good readers, when tested by the minute, can read fast. Consequently, oral reading fluency has become the king of qualifiers for Special Ed and Title I services. The flaw is that the formula isn’t commutative (if I may borrow a math concept for a moment): good readers may be able to read fast, but it doesn’t work in the opposite direction. Emphasizing ORF scores teaches kids to read fast, but that doesn’t mean they’ll read well. In fact, all this emphasis on speed is probably causing kids to struggle more than ever.

The emphasis in my classroom is on reading with accuracy, personality, and comprehension. Obviously, I believe plays are the perfect vehicle for doing just that, though the process of re-training kids who have been under the ORF thumb for so long isn’t without its tribulations. My students just recorded their first set of radio dramas. When it came time to record, there was a lot of mumbling, stumbling, and stammering from some, while others read their parts like people actually talk. And, get this, there was no correlation between such quality reading and their ORF scores! In fact, some of my lowest “per minute” readers read the most beautifully; some of my highest, rather poorly. You guessed it: the factor of greatest influence was whether or not a given student read independently at home during the two weeks leading up to the recording session.